Blonde Moment Monday

• As promised, I didn't post anymore about Christmas until after Thanksgiving and all of the sales from Black Friday were final. We did have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I was good for the most part but have eaten enough this past few days afterwards to make up for all of my good efforts otherwise!
• However, I will warn you that this post is more of a regular blog post in bullet form than my usual randomness posts. I don't know whats going on with these lately. I think I'm getting so random and begind on uploading pics from my camera that it's just not flowing like it should. Oh well!

•  Here is my cutie all dressed up to go see Santa. She literally looked like a live doll and we got stopped more than once on our way to meet Santa. We started out at an outdoor shopping area but found out that Santa was off on Monday, so we ventured further and found him at another mall.

•  We got a great one that we bought, but I was able to capture a few with my camera too! I will say I had to prompt Santa a bit to get him to talk but maybe he was just trying to gauge Ryder to see if he was scared or not.
• One of the best parts of the trip was having Santa tell Ryder that he would be looking in on Ryder 3 times to make sure that he was sleeping in his Big Boy Bed. Let me tell you, this was the beginning of success for him sleeping back upstairs again YAY! Thank you Santa :)

•  After the trip to the mall, we were all feeling very festive so we decided to get as much Christmas decorating as we could, considering that Scot is leaving for a business trip in December. We drank our rum infused Eggnog and got busy decorating while listening to my Christmas mix on the iPod.

•  We took a break from Christmas and got into the spirit of Thanksgiving. I got these two being silly together in their matching penguin shirts. I'm hoping to see Happy Feet 2 but Ryder has never been to a movie before, so it's either this one or Arthur Christmas.

• Picking right back up, the day after Thanksgiving we got out early after a stop at the grocery store, and we picked up our Christmas Tree!

• Ryder was very excited to help. In fact he probably grabbed every single ornament that was breakable and proceeded to dump them from their box as I was sitting helpless, pumping.
• Another reason I'm ready to be done with pumping

• Ryder's favorite part of course was picking out the best spot to put each ornament

• Sweet Tucker, posing next to the gingerbread man pillow!

• Friday we had friends of ours stop by to meet Brynley. They don't have any kids so they seemed a little overwhelmed at one point when Brynley was crying and Ryder was literally running circles in the living room. Scot and I laughed and just wondered what they must have thought on their way home!

• Saturday we attended my friend Claudia's wedding. It has been the busiest week ever, but I wouldn't have missed her Big Day! It was a sweet wedding and made me think of the day I got married. I can't believe we will be celebrating 5 years in April!

• I got to work addressing my Christmas cards to send out this week. First I went on Shutterfly and attempted to create a card. Then I had a reminder for 25 free cards from some random website. After a few failed attempts, I got frustrated and at that point just decided to use Walgreens online. I'd never used them before but was happy with the end result. I think at this point, my free time being so limited, I was just glad to have this project complete.
• Speaking of projects, I have my last MOPS meeting this week and we are doing a gift exchange that I have to buy a $10 item for, then I am attending a friend's birthday celebration Friday. Next week we are doing a cookie exchange so I have to make 2 dozen cookies. I'd also like to get busy with shopping for the rest of our families and get their gifts done. We have all of the kids done but just have our parents and I always do a gift for the grandparents so I need to get busy!

• When my mom dropped Ryder and Brynley off yesterday, she brought these sweet gifts for Brynley that my Aunt had left. Her parents own a jewelry store in Asheville so they had this sweet engraved cup and a tiny gold necklace for Brynley to wear as she grows. Adorable and so thoughtful!

• Here is our beautiful tree all decorated and lit up! It's really beginning to feel like Christmas around here and I just love it! I've been reading lots of Christmas stories to Ryder, and I need to find some yummy cookie recipes to make with him soon too.

• I'm really starting to feel like I still have a lot to do before Christmas gets here, but I'm glad that the decorating is now all done and we can enjoy it. Ryder is so fun this year and asks everyday to see the tree since it's been up!
• Did you find any deals for Black Friday? I haven't been shopping on Black Friday since I was a little girl when I'd go with my mom and Grannie, but I do miss the hype of it all!
• I hope that ya'll had a nice long weekend, ate plenty and watched lots of football like we did. And if not, I totally understand that too. At one point while watching the games, Scot turned to me and asked how many "Sister Wives" I needed to tape because the DVR was interfering with the game. I looked right back at him and said "Really? Just how many games do we need to watch??"